The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE’s blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.

We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

This time around, the Daring Baker’s challenge contained two required elements: a chocolate flourless cake, the Valentino, and home made ice cream. We could make the cakes in any shape we desired and provide an ice cream of our choice just as long as it was homemade. There were too many possibilities that kept jumping into my mind so this month I went back to some of my basics. A small taste of dessert, a touch of ice cream, a few fancy garnishes, and a luscious fruit sauce.

The dessert consisted of a mini valentino cake, vanilla bean ice cream, sauteed bananas, and passion fruit sauce. I decided to go with a small taste of dessert because chocolate desserts are often rich and overpowering. The elegant plating was much appreciated by the eater and my apprentice.

As an added bonus, and because I missed last month’s challenge, I decided to incorporate last month’s DB challege, a vanilla tuile. The dragonfly pattern was cut out of cardboard and used as a template for the tuiles. I bent the wings while they were still hot and they cooled into shape.

The whole dessert seemed to balance nicely. The rich chocolate balanced nicely with the sweet, yet tangy, passion fruit sauce. The ice cream and the sauteed fruit rounded out the dish perfectly. The tuile completed the dessert and elevated this dish to restaurant quality.

Chocolate Valentino
adapted from Sweet Treats by Chef Wan

16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter
5 large eggs separated

Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.

While your chocolate butter mixture is cooling. Butter your pan and line with a parchment circle then butter the parchment.

Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.
Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).

With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.

Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.

Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter. {link of folding demonstration}

Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C

Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C.
Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.

Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

This is one of those recipes that looks scary: six different elements, all sorts of different ingredients, hot sugar, gelatin, and meringue. To the untrained eye this challenge would appear to be almost overwhelming. Like many intricate pastries, this one can be broken down into its basic parts, made in advance, and assembled right when you need them. I’m sure this was a relief to many bakers out there.

Surprisingly enough I actually started this challenge a few weeks ahead of time. I shopped around and found a buche pan at Sur la Table for a not too unreasonable price. I then tackled the components: the custard, gavottes, and dacoise. The ganache and the mousse were prepared last and everything was assembled with the help of the pastry chef’s best friend, the freezer. Once assembled, frozen, and removed from the pan, a chocolate mirror glaze was prepared and the whole thing was glazed.

While the pastry tasted great, I have to say I was a bit disappointed with myself in the execution. There were a few things I probably could have done better, like glazing. There’s something about getting the glaze on the pastry in a nice, even format that always seems to elude me. I have strategically cut out or hid the spots where the glaze did not cover, but trust me, I missed several large spots. This is definitely an area of pastry work that I could use a little more practice.

There were a few small things that annoyed me about my own execution of this dessert. The layers aren’t even, the custard was too thick, and I failed to create a proper dacoise for the crown of the pastry. While this was an optional element for the challenge, it was something I intended on creating but failed. I know, I know, it still looks great, but these are the things I constantly think about when producing anything. The eater always tells me nobody will notice the flaws but I just can’t let them go.

I served the pastry to my parents for our Christmas celebration (a day late) and they ooo’ed and aww’ed at the pastry just like parents (should) do. After seeing the pictures and getting over my own failures, I think it turned out pretty good. Now that I have this fancy new buche form I will have to utilize it in new and unusual ways!

Up here in the northeast it’s cold, dark, and time for ICE CREAM! I know it sounds a bit strange to want ice cream when it’s so cold outside, but when ice cream calls, I must answer.

I was left with loads of egg yolks after several tests of macarons. What to do with all the yolks? That’s easy, ICE CREAM! Once again, The Perfect Scoop came to rescue. While I’m not usually a big cookbook person, there’s always something nice about having a good recipe that just works. This time I didn’t use just one recipe, I used THREE!

I chose three full-fat, full sugar ice creams: Chocolate, Oatmeal Cookie, and Fleur de Lait. There was no rhyme nor reason, I just chose three that sparked my interest. Chocolate because it’s my favorite, Oatmeal Cookie because I really dig the cookies, and Fleur de Lait because I just wanted to see how it would come out.

As usual, all the recipes were spot-on, easy to prepare, and worked. If you can make cream anglaise, you’re most of the way there to making ice cream. Many of the recipes in David’s book are based on this sauce so if you were able to make one of the French-style ice creams, you can pretty much make them all. The only difference in many of the recipes is the addition of certain ingredients or mix-ins.

I did choose an unusual egg yolk-free ice cream, Fleur de Lait. I was a bit intrigued by an ice cream that was thickened with corn starch and not flavored with anything other than sugar and milk. Since there is corn starch in the ice cream, it still has to be cooked so the cornstarch can work its magic thickening the mixture. When fully mixed and frozen, it comes out of the machine very white. The taste is very smooth, like frozen milk, but not icy at all. The best part about this flavor is you can mix anything into it or onto it and the flavor is not at all lost. It’s a lot like vanilla, minus the vanilla.

The only problem with making all this ice cream is now I have to eat it!

Crispy Pie Dough

PLUS

Gooey Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

EQUALS

COOKIE PIE!

Cookie Pie

1 recipe of your favorite crispy pie dough (pate sable)

2 eggs
1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. finely packed brown sugar
1 c. butter, melted and cooled
6 oz. chopped chocolate

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Line tart pans with dough and set aside.

In large bowl, beat eggs until foamy. Add flour and both sugars. Beat until well blended then mix in melted butter. Stir in chocolate. Pour into pie shell. Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour.

EAT!

Random fact: I’ve never made cupcakes. I’m not quite sure why, but I usually shy away from them. Maybe they seemed too basic, maybe I just didn’t see all the fanciful flavors of cupcakes out there these days, or maybe I just never had a decent reason. This week was different.

Usually I like to try and find some recipe of a food or pastry I either can’t find locally or something that I can make better than the pathetic supermarket offerings out there. Sometimes it’s macarons, other times it’s puff pastry, and sometimes I just want a decent home made bread. This time around I wanted to see what all the fuss was about cupcakes.

Cupcakes have apparently become quite the high-class food. There are shops in cities around the US that will make you stand in line and gladly charge you five bucks for the privilege of eating their cupcake masterpieces. I’m all for fancy new foods, but I never thought cupcakes were going to get this sort of treatment. I’m finding out how wrong I was.

I wanted to create my own cupcake masterpiece but I thought that I should at least look at some of the masters out there. There are plenty of cupcake chicks on the Daring Bakers Blogroll, at least one of them must have come up with something exciting, right? I spent a few hours reading all about these daring cupcakes. I was still amazed at all the flavor combinations, frosting types, and presentations for the lowly cupcake. After much research, I found one I liked.

A fellow baker, Chockylit has a site with nothing but cupcakes. Photos, frostings, tips, recipes, she has everything you’d ever want if you were going to make cupcakes (like me). I was intrigued by her recipe for Chocolate Chai cupcakes.

Her basic cupcake recipe was, well, basic. There was nothing really fancy here — no separating eggs, no sifting flour, no whipping meringue, no folding batters — how could this be? I read and re-read the recipe just to make sure and then decide to just give it a go.

Sure enough it was every bit as easy as it was written. Everything came together just as it should. I piped 12 mini cupcakes and 6 regular cupcakes and was amazed at how much leftover I had, even AFTER halving the recipe. I decided to take a chance and just let the batter sit while the cupcakes cooked. Twenty-five minutes later the cupcakes emerged from the oven, puffed up all nice and ready to go. I removed the mini’s from my silicone pan and refitted it with new cups and piped another batch and there was still more batter left. Batch two looked just as good as batch one so I finished one more round of six this time and baked them off as well.

While everything was cooling off I assembled the frosting. This was another first for me: American buttercream. Funny that I’ve never made an American buttercream yet I’ve made Swiss, French and Italian buttercream. Of course I would have to screw something up on my first shot and this was it. I got too anxious and just threw all the ingredients together and whipped them in the kitchenaide. My multi-temperatured ingredients did not want to properly mix and I was left with a broken mess.

I search around a little bit and realized everything needed to be at the same temperature to emulsify properly. Everything went back in the mixer and I whipped them to a frenzy and got it smooth enough to use. After piping about a dozen cupcakes it started to break again, probably from my warms hands or probably from my rushed technique.

I think they came out pretty good. The eater wasn’t a big fan of the frosting but cake and frosting aren’t really her thing. I tested a dozen of these on my coworkers and the cupcakes quickly disappeared. They got good reviews all around, even by the non-chai loving coworker of mine.

Have I been converted to a cupcake lover? Possibly. There will need to be a few more experiments carried — stay tuned!

I’ve been having a hard time consistently writing posts these days so I thought I’d change things up and report on what’s happening at the food geek household this weekend.

I’ve been bitten by the macaron bug again. After seeing Brilynn post on her macarons and the problems she encountered and the renewed interest in a previous macaron post of mine, I have decided to make several batches this week and try out a new method or two. I’m hoping to get a recipe to work consistently but I’m not expecting any miracles.

The ice cream machine will be back in action this weekend! I bought some new, pint sized, containers and they need to be filled up. Frozen yogurt will be my main focus this week; I’m hoping to come up with a decent chocolate frozen yogurt recipe.

In other news, I am now the second male member of the Daring Bakers. I didn’t get accepted in time to participate in the May challenge but June is quickly approaching and I will finally be able to compete share with the group. If I have some extra time this weekend, I will try to come up with a male version of this graphic. I got some help on the side, but here’s the new graphic:

Some foodgeek math for you:

Peanuts + popped popcorn + buttery caramel = crackerjackjef.
Divide the whole equation by 2 foodgeeks, you get zero.

I whipped up this quick batch of caramel corn with the intentions of having snacks for a few days, boy was I mistaken. You may as well just call this stuff crack, it’s that addictive. Five cups of popcorn slathered with caramel lasted a little under 12 hours I think, and that is only because I exercised restraint (and had to sleep a little bit).

The recipe, oddly enough, came from Making Artisan Chocolates. This recipe was marked easy, and it showed; the whole recipe took about as long as it took to pop the popcorn. I skipped the final chocolate step, piping thin chocolate stripes on the finished caramel corn, but it wasn’t missed. I think the book just added chocolate to stay on topic, but who knows, it could have been a welcome addition.

I don’t quite feel right about posting the recipe straight from the book. This book has more than enough good recipes in it to warrant the purchase and it’s cheap, too! (see above)

To spark my interest, I bought a few goodies. Last week I got a huge box in the mail. In the box was my new Cuisinart ICE-50BC ice cream maker. This is a pretty big upgrade over my last machine, the ICE-20. The ICE-50BC doesn’t require prefreezing of the work bowl and can crank out batch after batch of ice cream. I’ve tested out the machine with a few flavors: matcha, hazelnut praline, and David Leibovitz’s roasted banana.

That brings me to yet another purchase, The Perfect Scoop. I figured I should support a fellow foodblogger since I would hope people would support me, too. The book is far better than I hoped and has all sorts of new recipes I’m eager to try out.

Switching gears, I purchased a large supply of chocolate from Chocosphere, 22lbs to be exact. I was tired of running over to Whole Foods and picking up their overprices block pieces, so I pulled the trigger on a chocolate stash of my own. In the almost as huge box as the ICE-50BC was a 10lb block of E.Guittard 35% milk chocolate, a 10lb block of E.Guittard High Sierra white chocolate, a 2lb block of Dagoba 35% organic milk chocolate, and a 2lb bag of Dagoba organic cocoa butter. This should hold me over for the better part of the year unless I go on a serious chocolate bender.

I bought one last thing to go along with all that chocolate, Andrew Shotts’ Making Artisan Chocolates. I’ve been looking for a quality candy book and I think this one fits the bill. Truffles, hand-dipped chocolates, and molded chocolates are the majority of the book. Shotts doesn’t go overboard on techniques and doesn’t stray too far from the topics at hand. The recipes are all rated by difficulty, which is a big help when you’re trying out something unfamiliar. I’ve already tackled a few recipes and hope to share a few of them with you soon.

Finally, I’d like to apologize to the UPS man. Thanks for hauling all that loot to my second story condo. If I have any goodies the next time you arrive, I’ll be sure to offer you some.

The eater got me a very cool gift for Christmas that I really haven’t used all that much: The Chocovision Revolation 1. For those of you that aren’t super-foodies, the Revolation is a chocolate tempering machine. It is the little brother of the Revolation X3210 professional model, but don’t let that fool you, this little guy gets it done. It will melt up to two pounds of chocolate, temper it for you automatically, and keep your chocolate tempered for well over an hour or so.

When I temper chocolate by hand I never seem to have problems getting the chocolate tempered properly; my problems usually come from trying to use the tempered chocolate. Even with the best of setups I always seem to have problems dipping candies or filling molds or keeping all of the stray chocolate off of me. The Revolation probably takes a little bit of the art out chocolate making, but I’m not complaining.

Over the weekend I made several varieties of candies but I think I went a little overboard this time. I managed to come up with macadamia nut turtles, dark chocolate-matcha ganache truffles, white chocolate-coconut ganache truffles, and chocolate covered caramels. I really intended to make more, but the candy supply started to get out of hand.

Although I made too many plenty of candies, they did not turn out exactly how I expected. The chocolate I used to coat the candies is a bit on the bitter dark side. While this isn’t a bad thing, I don’t think it paired well with the matcha ganache or the macadamia nut turtles. The white chocolate ganache had all sorts of problems staying firm enough to coat. The real winner out of the entire batch was the caramels.

Since this was yet another chocolate making experiment and my ganaches didn’t work out as I intended, I’m going to forgo the recipes this time. After we manage to eat about all one hundred or so of these, I’ll try another batch and refine the recipe. Here’s a parting shot of all the candies in reserve:

For those who are looking for more on chocolates:

• David Lebovitz writes about his Paris chocolate adventures
• Chocolate Alchemy writes about making artisan chocolate in the Pacific NW
• Artisans Sweets writes about her boutique candies and pastries

I admit, macaron madness has fully infected the foodgeek household. I must have made at least 7 batches of macarons trying to get a recipe to come out. I’d have entire pans of cracked cookies, pans that only half of them cracked, and others that were perfect.

What did I learn from all of this?

• Do not fold the ingredients like you would a cake. The batter needs to be deflated a good deal to get that ‘flows like magma’ consistency.
• Drying the macarons out before they are cooked provides insurance. While it may not be necessary, I found that the dried batches I made almost never cracked and always formed a proper foot.
• I tried several oven temperatures, for the most part, they all worked. I settled on 335°F because it was what worked the best in the end
• If you add coloring, do so to the egg whites at the end of beating and before folding in the dry ingredients.

With all of the mistakes I made, there was a good deal of success. At the end of all of my experiments, I was able to produce four sheets of uncracked macarons. With those four sheets, I managed to come up with four separate flavors: chocolate, lemon, raspberry, and banana caramel.

This recipe has evolved a little bit, here’s what I’m using now:

Basic Macaron Batter

65g almond powder
85g powdered sugar
2 egg whites
30g granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 335°F

Place almond powder and powdered sugar in a food processor. Process with metal blade until thoroughly combined.

Beat whites in a bowl with an electric mixer at high speed. As the whites begin to foam, add sugar in a slow stream while mixing. Continue mixing at high speed until whites reach stiff peaks.

Fold almond mixture into egg whites in two additions. The mixture will deflate quite a bit. Continue folding until mixture is fully combined and shiny. (and flows like MAGMA)

Immediately fill a pastry bag fitted with an 11mm round tip and pipe into rounds onto a baking sheet lined with a silpat baking mat.

Rap the baking sheet a few times firmly on the countertop to flatten the macaron.

Leave macarons out to dry for about 30 minutes or until they do not stick to your finger when touched.

When macarons are sufficiently dry, place in the oven to bake. After about five minutes, a ruffled skirt should develop around the bottom edge of each macaron. Rotate the baking sheet by 180 degrees, and bake for another five to seven minutes.

Check to see if macarons are done by grabbing the top of one macaron and trying to shake it. They are done when the top barely slides against the skirt. If they are not done, extend baking time by two minutes intervals, checking after each extension.

Move silpat to a cooling rack. After macarons have cooled enough to touch, remove them from silpat and place upside down on rack. If they do not easily come off silpat, place in freezer for a few minutes and try again.